How often have you seen news reports of travelers stranded in airports for hours, even overnight? Think it can't happen to you? I did, until the unimaginable happened. And now I don't want to see the inside of an airport again, even though I could use a nice, long vacation.

The nightmare began innocently enough the afternoon of Sunday, July 29. I was traveling from Harrisburg, Pa. to Milwaukee, Wis. Have done it a bunch of times over the years with no problem.

I was scheduled to leave Harrisburg at 12:24 p.m. on the 29th. That was delayed, and we finally lifted off about 1:10. OK, not too bad. Figure on 20 minutes or so to Philadelphia; more than enough time to reach the connecting flight scheduled for 2:00.

We arrived in Philly shortly thereafter, but then the fun began. Storms moving up the east coast on Sunday played havoc with flights even as far west as eastern Pennsylvania. As one pilot explained, Philly is considered part of New York City’s zone of influence, so what happens in the Big Apple affects Philly as well. (I say, “Screw it!”, but no one asked for my opinion.) The weather in Philadelphia was fine: cloudy but dry with light winds. Jets could take off easily and get above the weather. No matter. Only those flights eastbound were allowed out.

My 2:00 flight was postponed to 3:30, then to 4:50. We finally boarded and pulled onto the tarmac at about 5:15, only to sit there for over three hours while the flight scheduling gods wherever (possibly in NYC) watched the weather patterns.

At 8:30 p.m. our pilot announced that the aircraft was running out of fuel and he was running out of time. Back to the terminal. Now the fun really began.

Approached a ticket agent and managed to get rebooked on a flight to O’Hare leaving at 10:55 that night. (The next flight to Milwaukee that had room was to leave at 6:00 p.m. Monday. Didn’t want to wait that long.) So I grabbed the Chicago ticket and headed to the new gate.

As you can imagine, that flight didn’t leave on time either. It got postponed to 12:26 a.m., then 1:49, then 2:30, and finally 3:30 a.m. Thankfully that one took off. (If you’re doing the math, you’ll see that I was in the Philly airport for over 13 hours.)

Some will chew out U.S. Airways, but in all honesty it wasn’t their fault. The blame lies with whoever is in charge of airspace. Philadelphia needs more flexibility in allowing its aircraft to leave. Every airline and every aircraft trying to depart on Sunday afternoon was affected.

The only flights that needed to be held up were those headed to airports shut down due to the weather. Mine, destined for sunny Milwaukee, should have been released. Someone in authority needs to step in and use common sense in these situations. Or we consumers will be demanding that heads roll in the appropriate government agencies.